Early-30s Jewish feminist. Ashkenazi. Cis/straight (she/her). Loves all animals, but especially birds. Despite the name, I am not an atheist. I'm not a theist, either.
I can also be found posting recipes at Recipes Worth Trying and parrots at Pretty Parrot.
This white woman’s shocking account of police brutality reveals the importance of the #BlackLivesMatter movement
Molly Suzanna shared a story on Facebook that she had never told before: when she was 19, she ran a red light while crying, then was pulled over and forcefully removed and beaten by a police officer. She explains in the letter that she believes her situation would have been even worse had she been black — and she ends the letter with an important call to action.
This woman got hauled out of a window, beaten, stripped, tortured, and humiliated, and she still is able to understand how white privilege saved her life.
Conservatives, especially on Fox News and other right-wing media outlets, have long framed George Soros as a “puppet master” and a “globalist” who controls the government with his “tentacles.” Sam Bee explains that type of language didn’t come out of nowhere.
Trump speaks in dog whistles and anti-semitic coded language with the greatest of ease. It is second nature for him. He sells white victimhood just as easy.
'He's saying that Jews shouldn't even have civil rights,' Steve West's son says of father who once declared that 'Hitler was right'
The son and daughter of a Missouri House candidate are urging people not to vote for him because he regularly espouses racial and homophobic views and dislikes Jews and Muslims.
Steve West, 64, gained attention after winning the August Republican primary for a northwest Missouri House seat when word spread about views he frequently expressed on a radio show, such as saying “Hitler was right.”
“I can’t imagine him being in any level of government,” his daughter, Emily West, told The Kansas City Star on Monday.
On Tuesday, her brother, Andy West, told the newspaper his father is “a fanatic” who must be stopped.
“If he gets elected, it would legitimize him,” Andy West said. “Then he would become a state official, and he’s saying that Jews shouldn’t even have civil rights.”
The West children became more concerned when they recently drove through the Clay County district Steve West would represent and saw several yard signs supporting him.
Anti-Semitism is gaining national attention after the shooting deaths of 11 Jewish people Saturday at a synagogue in Pittsburgh by a gunman who allegedly said “I just want to kill Jews.”
A Jewish emergency crew and police officers at the site of the mass shooting that killed 11 people and wounded six at the Tree Of Life synagogue, on October 28, 2018, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Jeff Swensen/Getty Images/AFP)
Steve West, who denies that he is anti-Semitic, denounced the shootings Monday, and said some of his comments have been taken out of context.
“I would never condone any violence against any people because of a specific race or religion or anything else,” he said.
Andrew West doubted his father would commit violence but said he has the same objective as the Pittsburgh shooter, which is “the removal of Jews from America.”
In his October 15 radio show, called “The Hard Truth with Jack Justice,” West complained about the relationship between the United States and Israel.
“They have been running this assault on America,” he said. “They have been giving us gay marriage, pornography, abortion, everything that’s anti-Christian . This is what they do. This is how they corrupt a Christian nation, because they are an anti-Christ people.”
Emily West said her father’s views have caused a rift between him and his children. She has not spoken to him since he rejected her suggestion that he drop out of the race after he won in August.
West blames his ex-wife for his children’s rejection.
“I had a toxic divorce from my ex-wife and she’s poisoned my kids, and I have to live with that,” he said.
hey so i don’t wear a hijab and i’m not muslim so i definitely don’t have the authority to answer this question (or any other questions i’ve been getting abt this) (i’m just a lil canadian politics blog i didn’t expect this to blow up lol)
BUT here are some tweets by the original tweeter (who wears a hijab) that clarify some things
This is also good if you’re meeting an Orthodox Jewish person who’s not the same gender as you! Not all Orthodox Jews hold by this restriction, and many consider it a permissible exception to shake hands in a formal greeting context; I’d guess this is parallel to Ms. Soueidan’s last-quoted tweet above. And as that says, the sensible thing is to wait for initiation.
I had to warn my (non-Jewish) boss about the shaking hands thing when we went to meet with an Orthodox rabbi. Indeed, the visiting rabbi did not shake my hand, though the host (also Orthodox) did. So its true, you never know; just wait for people to initiate or not and let them take the lead.
Remember the Muslim group who started raising funds to help pay for funerals and medical expenses for the victims in Pittsburgh?? Well. They’re not done yet. Look at this
They have increased their goal several times and exceeded it within hours. HOURS!!
Here is their latest update
They’re asking you to please donate to their other fund, to help the victims of the shooting in Kentucky. These people are beyond amazing. They give me hope for the future and restore my faith in humanity.
Here is the fund for the synagogue
Here is the fund for the victims in Kentucky
They haven’t reached their goal with this one yet. If you’re feeling compelled to donate, please donate to the Kentucky fund. Because of everything else going on, it hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention. But these two peoples lives were just as important. They were just as loved and they will be just as missed.
And because they haven’t gotten as much attention and their stories aren’t in the news as much, here’s their story. From the fund raiser.
Please pass this around. If you can’t donate, someone who sees your reblog might.
It has been two and half hours since I posted this and the funds raised has increased by almost $2800 !!! This is amazing !! You are wonderful people for helping in any way you can.
Keep up the great work!!
PS: the fund for the Tree Of Life victims has raised an additional $11k in the past two and half hours as well. How amazing is that ?!
A white man who allegedly killed two people at a Kroger grocery store in Kentucky tried to enter a predominantly black church nearby minutes before the fatal shooting, police said.
The two people killed Wednesday – Maurice Stallard and Vickie Jones – were shot in the grocery store and the parking lot, respectively. CNN affiliate WDRB described both victims as black.
Police arrested suspect Gregory A. Bush, 51, shortly after the shooting, which happened in the Louisville suburb of Jeffersontown.
“Our hearts break for the families of the those we lost to the tragedy at the Jeffersontown Kroger,” Russell M. Coleman, the US attorney for the Western District of Kentucky, said in a statement Friday. “The murders are not being taken lightly by the United States government. Federal investigators are supporting local law enforcement and examining this matter from the perspective of federal criminal law, which includes potential civil rights violations such as hate crimes.”
Surveillance video showed that 10 to 15 minutes before the grocery store shooting, Bush tried to enter the First Baptist Church in Jeffersontown, police Chief Sam Rogers said.
A church member sitting in the parking lot saw the suspect banging on and pulling the door, trying to get inside, the affiliate reported.
“To think that an hour and a half earlier, we had 70 people in the church,” church administrator Billy Williams told the affiliate. “But by the time he came through, all doors were locked, and there were probably eight or 10 still in the building.”
When Bush was unable to enter the church, he went to Kroger and opened fire in the store, killing Stallard, 69, police said.
The suspect then fled the store and shot a second victim, Jones, 67, in the parking lot, according to authorities.
He exchanged multiple rounds of gunfire in the Kroger parking lot with an armed civilian who had a carry concealed permit. Nobody was injured, and the suspect fled the scene, police said. He was arrested nearby.
Stallard was at the store with his 12-year-old grandson buying a poster board for the boy’s school project when he got shot. His grandson ran out of the store, screaming for help, Enzo Palombino said.
Palombino told the affiliate that the boy ran toward him. He grabbed his hand and took him to his car, where they called the boy’s mother.
“We’re on the phone just trying to get ahold of his mom, and I could just see the fear in his face,” he said. “And I’m holding him the whole time.”
Palombino said the boy’s screaming and yelling is still replaying in his head…
Services at Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh start at 9:45 A.M. Samet, who is 80 years old, pulled into a handicapped spot in front of the building on the morning of October 27 at 9:49.
“Somebody knocked on my window,” Samet said the next day. “There was this guy. Very calm and respectful. [He] told me, you better back up, there is an active shooting going on in your synagogue.”
It took Samet sixty seconds to process what the man was saying. Samet was born in Hungary. He turned eight years old at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. He spent five and a half years in an orphanage in Israel. He has been a member of Tree of Life Congregation for fifty-five years.
“My God, my story doesn’t end,” he said.
Samet turned. Standing three feet away from him, on the other side of the car, was a police officer with a pistol drawn. “He was popping his head out from behind a wall and shooting,” Samet said.
Samet looked to see who the police officer was shooting, and saw a man aiming an automatic weapon in his direction. “He was shooting towards the cop, who was about four feet away from me,” Samet said. He saw the men exchange fire.
“I saw smoking coming out of his muzzle,” Samet said. “I was in the line of fire.”
Samet tried to back his car out of the parking lot, but other cars were trying to do the same thing. The attacker wasn’t aiming at him. “None of the bullets hit me or hit my car,” Samet said. “The policeman could kill him.”
Samet knew virtually everyone who the attacker, Robert Bowers, allegedly murdered that day. He was a leading figure at Tree of Life; had been the designated Torah chanter for four decades, and had led morning services for years. Two years ago, he led services at the shiva for synagogue member Joyce Feinberg’s husband. She was shot dead on Saturday morning. “She was a real lady,” Samet said. “She completely dedicated her life to the synagogue since her husband died.”
Samet was friendly with Sylvan and Bernice Simon, the 86 and 84 year old who were murdered together in the synagogue sanctuary. Samet and Sylvan Simon would talk about their time as paratroopers, Samet in the Israeli army and Sylvan in the U.S. army.
Irving Younger, 69, usually stood by the door of the sanctuary, Samet said, and greeted people as they arrived. He would have been the first person the attacker saw when he assaulted the service. [Younger] was among the dead on Saturday.
Cecil Rosenthal, 59, who was developmentally disabled, also sat near the door. “Everybody loved him,” Samet said. He and his brother, David Rosenthal, were both murdered.
Samet said that Rose Mallinger, who was in her 90’s, would attend the service each week with her daughter. “They sit behind me,” Samet said. “If I was inside the synagogue, I would be in the line of fire.”
More than anything on Sunday, Samet seemed to be going back in his mind to the 1940s, when the Nazis tortured and murdered his family. His father died of typhoid shortly after the war.
“My mother was the interpreter,” he said. “She spoke fluent German. She saved hundreds of Jews.”
The Nazis put Samet’s family on a train to Auschwitz, but Slovakian partisans blew up the railroad line. The Samets ended up in a large lumberyard owned by a man with a large swastika tattooed on his chest, which he would show the family.
“My mother taught us never listen what they have to say,” Samet said. “Look at their hands. Because words cannot kill you.”
On Sunday afternoon, Samet was preparing to travel to a local church to tell the story of his family’s experience in the Holocaust. He said he would likely say something about what he had been through the day before.
Asked what his mother, Rachel Samet, would have said about the massacre he survived on Saturday, Samet said: “It just never ends.”
He does and can hate Jewish people, as he hates Black, Brown, LGBTQ, and Disabled people. He encouraged this. He encouraged the MAGAbomber. HE IS THEIR EMBLEM OF HATE.
Agnostic (sometime) theologian @atheologist - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
